Forgotten Americans: Elihu Root

“Democratic absolutism is just as repulsive, and history has shown it to be just as fatal, to the rights of individual manhood as is monarchical absolutism.“ - Elihu Root (1913)

"No anecdotes are told of Elihu Root" - James Morrow (1914)

An edited and expanded version of a post from 2013 which I think timely because of current discussions in our society about the meaning of democracy in the context of a constitutional republic, and the ascendancy of viewpoints contrary to traditional American values that would spell the end of our republic should they triumph.

Today Elihu Root is a Forgotten American, but in the early 20th century he was one of America’s most prominent public figures. The story of his political split with his friend Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 remains important to understanding the political conflicts of 21st century America.

Born in 1845, Elihu Root became a successful New York City lawyer with clients including Jay Gould, Andrew Carnegie and Chester A Arthur (who appointed him US Attorney for the Southern District of New York when he became President in the early 1880s).

Active in the Republican Party, he served as Secretary of War from 1899 to 1904 under Presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, during his tenure restructuring the National Guard, enlarging West Point, creating the Army War College while overseeing the suppression of the Filipino insurrection and establishing the governance structure for this new American acquisition.  As a personal footnote, my grandfather enlisted in the Army six weeks after arriving from Russia in 1905 (he'd deserted from the Russian army), was sent to the Philippines and, after serving six years was discharged as a sergeant, becoming a proud American citizen in the process.

After briefly returning to law practice Root rejoined the second Roosevelt Administration in 1905 as Secretary of State, supporting the building of the Panama Canal, and negotiating 24 international arbitration treaties for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912.

With the end of the Roosevelt administration in 1909, Root was appointed as Senator from New York, serving until 1915.  During and after his term he was also the first president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, leading it until 1925.  After WWI he helped design the World Court and was one of the founders of the Council for Foreign Relations.  Root died in 1937.  And James Morrow was correct, I found no anecdotes about him.

But what prompted me to write this post was Root's political split with Teddy Roosevelt in 1912 and the resulting chaos at the Republican Convention that year.  Edmund Morris wrote about this episode in the third, and final, volume of his entertaining Roosevelt biography: Colonel Roosevelt.  Morris is wonderful at capturing personalities along with their actions and adventures (his recounting of Roosevelt's African safari and the daring, and life altering, expedition down the River of Doubt in Brazil is worth the price of the book). He's also enthralled by political machinations, but has little interest in political theory, ideas, philosophy or governance which is what prompted the split and gets short shrift in his book, leaving readers with little understanding of why Roosevelt provoked such opposition (it also explains the great failure of his biography of Ronald Reagan who was, above all, a man of ideas).

Roosevelt and Root had been political allies and friends.  Root shared Roosevelt's political progressivism and supported his legislative program, but between the end of his presidency in 1909 and the presidential nominating campaign in 1912, Teddy had come to believe that the next stage of the progressive legislative program could only succeed if linked with a progressive constitutional reform program including the broad use of referendums, initiatives, recall of judges, and popular vote overriding of judicial decisions.  At its core was the desire to replace indirect republican representative government with direct democracy or, as Roosevelt put it, "people themselves must be the ultimate makers of their own Constitution".  Elihu Root believed this change would be devastating to the American political system and its people because it meant the majority would could change the fundamental meaning of the Constitution, avoiding the amending procedures of Article V, and endangering the minority protections embedded in its provisions.  For Root it was one thing to advocate for progressive legislation consistent with the Constitution, it was another to attempt to radically change the constitution itself.

It was for this same reason that Root opposed the proposed 17th Amendment providing for the direct election of Senators, arguing the Constitution's framers had grasped that "the weakness of democracy is the liability to continual change; they realized that there needed to be some guardian of the sober second thought; and so they created the Senate" with longer terms and indirect election. A Senate directly elected by the people, would be less likely to "protect the American democracy against itself".

In the view of Root, the essentials of human nature remained unchanged and the insight of Classical philosophers regarding the tendency of all forms of government to degenerate over time:

Monarchy to Absolutism

Autocracy to Oligarchy

Democracy to Tyranny

- remained a valid critique. Root recognized that the mechanisms of the Constitution were designed to try to correct these defects in the newly created democratic republic.
 
[For a thorough discussion of Roosevelt's intellectual background and the extent to which it deviated from the views of the Founders and Lincoln, see Jean Yarbrough's book Theodore Roosevelt And The American Political Tradition.]

Roosevelt's decision to challenge his protege and the sitting president, William Howard Taft, for the 1912 Republican nomination forced Root to make a hard choice.  At the time, he remarked to a friend:

"I care more for one button on Theodore Roosevelt's waistcoat than for Taft's whole body."

Nonetheless, he felt compelled to support Taft because of the principles involved.  It was a wrenching personal decision (and even more so for Senator Henry Cabot Lodge who had been a very close friend with Teddy since college days).  Root was elected Chairman of the Convention in a hotly contested election and oversaw its tumultuous course, helping to ensure the renomination of President Taft.  In his convention keynote speech he reminded delegates that the Republican Party was "born in protest against the extension of a system of human slavery approved and maintained by majorities."

After losing the nomination, Roosevelt ran on the Progressive Party ticket, losing the election to Woodrow Wilson but ensuring that Taft would not be reelected.  Despite Taft's defeat, Root (and Lodge) were satisfied that Roosevelt had not taken over the Republican Party:

"This has not seemed to me to make any difference in our duty to hold the Republican Party firmly to the support of our constitutional system. Worse things can happen to a party than to be beaten."

The following year, Root gave two lectures at Princeton University, subsequently published as Experiments In Government And The Essentials Of The Constitution.  Only thirty pages in length it is worth reading today because the views Root expresses are timeless and not dependent on the specific historical circumstances of the early 20th century.

Root starts by reaffirming his belief in the need for new laws to meet modern industrial conditions:

"It is manifest that the laws which were entirely adequate under the conditions of a century ago to secure individual and public welfare must be in many respects inadequate to accomplish the same results under all these new conditions"

 "Many interferences with contract and with property which would have been unjustifiable a century ago are demanded by the conditions which exist now and are permissible without violating any constitutional limitation."

- but goes on to make an important distinction between the process of devising new laws to meet new conditions and modifying the principles upon which government is based.

According to Root, we must recognize (echoing Madison's sentiments in Federalist 51) that

"Human nature does not change very much.  The forces of evil are hard to control now as they always have been.  It is easy to fail and hard to succeed in reconciling liberty and order."

In order to achieve this the Constitution provides for limits on government power in order to preserve individual rights.  America was the first polity to take this approach as "The ancient republics, however, put the state first and regarded the individual only as a member of the state . . . they did not think of individuals as having rights independent of the state, or against the state".

Root goes on to say that "It is impossible to overestimate the importance of the consequences which followed from these two distinct and opposed theories of government".  The theory of the ancient republics was behind the French Revolution of 1789 and its heirs which:

"followed the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, with the negation of those rights in the oppression of the Reign of Terror, the despotism of Napoleon, the popular submission of the second empire and the subservience of the individual citizen to official superiority which still prevails so widely on the continent of Europe."

Or, as Margaret Thatcher more pungently put it, the French Revolution produced "a pile of corpses and a tyrant" while the American Revolution gave us George Washington and the Constitution.  One wonders what Root would have said in the wake of the European rise of Fascism, Communism and National Socialism?

According to the theory of American constitutionalism:

"it is the very soul of our political institutions that they protect the individual against the majority. [The inalienable rights cited in the Declaration] are not derived from any majority.  They are not disposable by any majority.  They are superior to all majorities.  The weakest minority, the most despised sect, exist by their own right.  The most friendless and lonely human being on American soil holds his right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and all that goes to make them up by title indefeasible against the world, and it is the glory of American self-government that by the limitations of the constitution we have protected that right against even ourselves.  That protection cannot be continued and that right cannot be maintained except by jealously preserving at all times and under all circumstances the rule of principle which is eternal over the will of majorities which shift and pass away."

"Democratic absolutism is just as repulsive, and history has shown it to be just as fatal, to the rights of individual manhood as is monarchical absolutism."

Root asks for humility in considering what government can, and cannot, accomplish pointing out that:

"A very large part of the litigation, injustice, dissatisfaction, and contempt for law which we deplore, results from ignorant and inconsiderate legislation with perfectly good intentions."

"Law cannot give to depravity the rewards of virtue, to indolence the rewards of industry, to indifference the rewards of ambition, or to ignorance the rewards of learning  . . . We know all this, but when we see how much misery there is in the world and instinctively cry out against it, and when we see some things that government may do to mitigate it, we are apt to forget how little after all it is possible for any government to do . . ."

"The chief motive power which has moved mankind along . . . has been the sum total of intelligent selfishness in a vast number of individuals, each working for his own support, his own gain, his own betterment.  It is that which has cleared the forests and cultivated the field . . .  made the discoveries and inventions, covered the earth with commerce, softened by intercourse the enmities of nations and races . . .  gradually, during the long process, selfishness has grown more intelligent, with a broader view of individual benefit from the common good and gradually the influences of nobler standards of altruism, of just and human sympathy have impressed themselves . . . but the complete control of such motives will be the millennium.  Any attempt to enforce a millennial standard now by law must necessary fail."

Moreover, an unbridled democratic government will ultimately undermine that which it seeks to protect:

"When government undertakes to give the individual citizen protection by regulating the conduct of others towards him in the field where formerly he protected himself by his freedom of contract, it is limiting the liberty of the citizen whose conduct is regulated and taking a step in the direction of paternal government.  While the new conditions of industrial life make it plainly necessary that many such steps shall be taken, they should be taken only so far as they are necessary and effective.  Interference with individual liberty by government should be jealously watched and restrained, because the habit of undue interference destroys that independence of character without which in its citizens no free government can endure . . . Weaken individual character among a people by comfortable reliance upon a paternal government and a nation soon becomes incapable of free self-government and fit only to be governed."

A nation governed by referendum, initiative and the ability to overrule judicial rulings by popular vote cannot sustain itself because:

"If there be no general rules which control particular action, general principles are obscured or set aside by the desires and impulses of the occasion.  Our knowledge of the weakness of human nature and countless illustrations from the history of legislation in our own country point equally to the conclusion that if governmental authority is to be controlled by rules of action, it cannot be relied upon to impose those rules upon itself at the time of action, but must have them prescribed beforehand"

- which Roots states is what the Constitution does by limiting the powers of government, distributing those limited powers among the three branches of government, establishing a federal system and allowing for the validity of laws to be judged by the courts. 

With his defeat in 1912, the reforms proposed by Teddy Roosevelt and other progressives did not come to pass as Root and others feared, but a modified version of the progressive vision was put into place starting with the New Deal Supreme Court which effectively modified the principles of our government without Constitutional amendment by narrowing the definition of liberty, tearing down the walls separating the branches of government and allowing the growth of the administrative state. The modern progressive cult of The Living Constitution would further erode remaining constitutional protections, converting the courts into just another legislative body for enacting policy preferences (for more on this read A Misunderstanding Or Projection?).

In the 21st century, the Progressive move towards majoritarian rule has taken a new turn with the movement towards a national popular vote and the effective political elimination of the states. However, it is also bizarrely mixed with identity and group politics, in a way earlier Progressives would have found repulsive, raising the possibility of a hybrid majoritarian state in which certain groups, elevated under the rules of intersectionality, would hold the trump cards.

We have reached the point where the Woke and 21st century Identity Progressives (along with their paramilitary forces) believe the entire Constitution and American founding a sham, merely a front for maintaining white supremacy and thus should be overturned by any means necessary.  In their minds, since our current system is a front for fascist control, they are justified in seeking power to assert their own absolute control in order to create their New World. 

What A Wonderful World

 Louis Armstrong's hit single from 1967.  This version includes the little heard spoken introduction in which Louis explains why he is singing a song with such optimistic lyrics even though war and pollution exist in the world.  Appropriate for the man who once explained his stage presence as "I'm there in the cause of happiness".  Armstrong is a THC favorite and this is his 15th post with the Armstrong tag.

The composers were Bob Thiele and George David Weiss.  Thiele produced recording for many jazz artists such as John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie and Sonny Rollins.  Weiss was an arranger for several of the big bands during the 40s and 50s, composed Lullaby of Birdland which became a standard for Ella Fitzgerald, and wrote the English language lyrics for The Lion Sleeps Tonight.

Love Reign O'er Me

Though many of The Who's early singles are now regarded as classics (My Generation, The Kids Are Alright, Substitute, I Can't Explain) none charted in the USA, and the highest charting of their first three albums (The Who Sell Out) only reached #48.  It was only with the release of Tommy in May 1969 that the band gained widespread popularity in the States.  At the time, I thought Tommy was great, but though it has a lot of outstanding songs the production is flawed and the sound of the record much too subdued.

Live At Leeds, released in May 1970, remains the finest live rock album ever released and Who's Next (August 1971) was an instant classic with most of the tracks still standards today.  When the double-album Quadrophenia was released in October 1973, I liked it but thought it not as outstanding as the prior three albums.  In recent years, I've returned to listening to Quadrophenia and now regard it as the apex of The Who's studio recordings.  The songs work individually and together to tell a coherent story, the lyrics are consistently the best Pete Townshend ever wrote, the band incredibly tight, and the production ties it all together.  The closing song, the majestic and moving Love Reign O'er Me, combines it all and adds the best vocal of Roger Daltrey's career; and one of the greatest vocals in rock.

Take the time to listen to it here, and below is Rick Beato's breakdown.  As usual, Rick's knowledge and enthusiasm (along with his air drumming) makes the video a joy to watch.

Only love
Can make it rain
The way the beach is kissed by the sea
Only love
Can make it rain
Like the sweat of lovers'
Laying in the fields

Love, reign o'er me
Love, reign o'er me, rain on me, rain on me

 

Only love
Can bring the rain
That makes you yearn to the sky
Only love
Can bring the rain
That falls like tears from on high

Love, reign o'er me, rain on me, rain on me
Love, reign o'er me, rain on me, rain on me

 

On the dry and dusty road
The nights we spend apart alone
I need to get back home to cool, cool rain
I can't sleep and I lay and I think
The night is hot and black as ink
Oh God, I need a drink of cool, cool rain

 

Love, reign o'er me, rain on me, on me, on me, oh
Love, reign o'er me, whoa, on me

Love

Au Contraire

Regarding this morning's post about the rules, Mr Anton Chigurh begs to disagree with the views expressed by Mr Walter Sobczak.  Perhaps both are 2020.  From No Country For Old Men. 

The Rules

I think this is 2020.  From The Big Lebowski, of course.

Conspiracy Theories

The allegation that Dominion software was manipulated to determine the results of the presidential election is a conspiracy theory and, like most such conspiracies, false.  It has all the hallmarks of classic conspiracy theories; convoluted, some pseudo-technical mumble-jumble, dark forces at work behind the scenes, hundreds, if not thousands, of people involved, ignoring alternative explanations, and just enough linkage to a couple of established facts to make people think it possible.

Per my recent post, the President will lose his legal challenges, though he has the right to pursue them, but the Dominion software stuff is malicious nonsense and unworthy of promotion by Trump and his team.  I am glad to see on Sunday the Trump legal team cut its ties to Sidney Powell, who had promoted this theory at Thursday's press conference run by Rudy Giuliani.  That she was allowed to spout this delusional material is a reflection on the chaos and lack of thought within Trump's legal team as well as Giuliani's mental state.  Now they need to sever ties with Lin Wood, and let this issue die.  However, with Trump's gullibility and penchant for conspiracy theories this may not be over and it needs to be. [UPDATE: Trump is not abandoning his insane conspiracy theories and his legal team continues to be an embarrassment.  Giuliani and his "experts"showed up here in Arizona to contest the election and it is clear they actually know nothing about how this state conducts its elections; I didn't like the election results but have confidence in the basic integrity of the process.  Our very pro-Trump governor has rejected this nonsense theories and supported the certification.  We are at the completely ridiculous stage.  What the President is doing is reprehensible, and how he is doing it is even worse than what he is doing.  He will lose but the repercussions will be with us for a long time.]*

Conspiracy theories arise in all countries and cultures.  There is something in human nature to which they appeal.  They can arise in many contexts, not just political as is happening now.

Two examples of conspiracy theories in the political context illustrate their essential features.

One that never gained more than limited traction is the conspiracy theory that President Franklin Roosevelt knew in advance of the Japanese plan to attack Pearl Harbor and let it proceed in order to embroil the United States in World War Two.  The tenuous factual starting point for conspiracy theorists is the existence of a few Japanese communications intercepted by American intelligence indicating Pearl Harbor as a potential target, and the political and military maneuvering FDR was undertaking in anticipation of American involvement in the war.  The theory studiously ignores a lot of context.  

Yes, there were some isolated intercepted communications but these came within in a blizzard of intercepts, indicating that Japan was preparing an attack with the overwhelming bulk concerning an advance south towards the British and Dutch possessions in Southeast Asia and possibly towards the Philippines.  All of the information we see relating to top military and cabinet officials in D.C. from late November until December 7, 1941 shows they anticipated the Japanese attack but in a southerly direction, not west towards Pearl.

Because of the flow of the intelligence intercepts, there are many others beyond FDR who would have seen the communications, including our military leaders and the Secretary of War.  This would have required men like George C Marshall, Ernest King, and Henry Stimson to have participated in allowing the Pearl Harbor attack.  Anyone who knows anything about those individuals understands they would never have agreed to do so.  Nor do I believe FDR capable of it - he was, above all a Navy man.

Moreover, getting into a war with Japan was counter to American strategy and potentially derailed it.  FDR and the military chiefs of staff had agreed that war was likely but that the primary threat was Germany, not Japan.  The military had been adamant about avoiding war with Japan because it would have diverted resources needed when, not whether, war with Germany came, and even if it came with both 85% of American resources were to be direct towards Europe.  Pearl Harbor created a dilemma for the U.S during the first days after the attack, with the worry being that public opinion would force resources planned for Europe to be recommitted to the Pacific, a problem only solved by Hitler's still puzzling decision to declare war on America on December 11.

The other example, and the more impactful on Americans in triggering distrust of the government, is the assassination of President Kennedy, which took place 57 years ago yesterday.  Even today, half of Americans believe a conspiracy was behind his murder and, at times in the past more than 70% held such views.  Most of those conspiracy theories propose some combination of anti-communists, U.S. intelligence agencies, and VP Lyndon Johnson were behind the tragedy.  

How did the murder of a popular American president by an avowed communist and admirer of Fidel Castro, who had earlier the same year attempted to assassinate a right-wing figure in the Dallas area (only narrowing missing), end up with many Americans believing in a right-wing conspiracy?

As explained in my post A Cruel And Shocking Act, there was a conspiracy involving the Warren Commission, but not the one conspiracy theorists postulated.  LBJ, Robert Kennedy and the bungling FBI and CIA, each had their reasons for the Commission wrapping up its work quickly, pinning the blame on Oswald, and for withholding sensitive information during the investigation.  Some of the Warren Commission's obvious errors, along with a Soviet disinformation campaign, gave instant credibility to conspiracy theorists, leading them to ever more elaborate and far-fetched alternative explanations of the assassination, culminating in Oliver Stone's hallucinatory fantasy, JFK, in the 1990s.

Out of these initial errors, the conspiracy theorists, some of whom, like Mark Lane, made long and profitable careers, built ever more elaborate and fanciful constructs to explain the events in Dallas.  For anyone taking the time to really examine the details and think through all the practical aspects it falls apart as easily as a house of cards in a light wind, but most people don't have that time.  The result was, if you accepted the initial premise, the rest seems to follow logically.  Like many conspiracy theories, those propagating it are very careful what details to tell their followers, and which to leave out.  Sometimes, it is very simple things; I'd read some of the early conspiracy books before realizing how twisted they were and was led to believe that one reason to believe Oswald was not the shooter was how difficult it was to make the shoots he was alleged to have taken; well beyond his capabilities.  Making my first visit to Dealey Plaza in the late 1990s, I was surprised to see how much smaller it was in person than the impression given by books and photos.  And when I was at the window in the Book Depository from which Oswald fired the shots, I realized, having done some rifle shooting, how relatively easy the shots would have been for a trained Marine rifleman (and everyone I've spoken with who has experience shooting has had the same reaction looking out that window).  Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman.  There was no conspiracy.

I also have a personal distaste for conspiracy theories and my default position is not to believe them without compelling evidence that I've personally examined.  It stems in part from reading a lot of history from a very early age and seeing how contingent many great events are on happenstance; how many miscalculations are made by historical figures; how much naturally goes wrong in the course of events; and how difficult it is to coordinate large groups in a conspiracy.

My working experience reinforced those views.  I've investigated incidents that looked initially as planned, requiring willfulness by the participants, and been surprised to find out that while it looked awful, no one planned the outcome or deliberately acted improperly.  Rather, a series of misjudgments, innocent acts, and actions not in anyone's control or foresight led to the result.  I've also been directly involved in some events that received substantial media attention and were the subject of public claims that I, and others, had created a conspiracy, imputing motives to us that we did not have, and patterns of action that simply did not exist in the real world.

I mentioned my default settings regarding conspiracy theories above.  But regarding the current electoral dispute, particularly that of manipulation of the voting systems, there is an aspect that explains, though it does not excuse, some of the current belief of Trump supporters in such a conspiracy; the Russia collusion hoax and the entire way the Democratic Party and its media allies have destroyed norms over the past four years.

As I've written, when the issue of possible collusion between the Trump campaign, or Trump himself, with the Russians was raised in late 2016 and early 2017 I thought there might be something to it.  Over the next four years I read more than 10,000 pages of original source documents, not relying upon being told by others what they said.

If you had told me in January 2017 the Clinton campaign had taken Russian disinformation regarding Trump, disseminated it to the media in an attempt to influence the election, and gone to the FBI in order to prompt it to obtain a warrant to spy on their opponent's campaign, I would not have believed it.

If you had told me in February 2017 that once Clinton unexpectedly lost the election, the Democratic party, federal bureaucrats (including the Director of the FBI deliberately lying to the President) and their allies in the media, would convert the campaign actions into a conspiracy to unseat the new President and, failing that to create an ongoing investigation designed to hamstring the administration, provide a continued series of media leaks, attempt to trap the President into an obstruction of justice charge, and damaging the President in the 2018 mid-terms, I would not have believed it.

But, in fact, that is what happened.  We had an unprecedented conspiracy at the highest levels of government.  The greatest scandal in American political history.  And it worked.  A November 2018 Economist/YouGov poll found that 63% of Democrats believed the Russians directly hacked the voting results in 2016, an accusation for which there is absolutely no evidence.  The Democrats rode this to regaining the House in 2018 and the Mueller investigation would still be ongoing if Bill Barr had not finally stepped in to call a halt to the farce.

Moreover, those who believe Trump is the victim of an electoral conspiracy need merely look at Democrats and their media allies who for four years have denounced Trump as a Hitler-like figure who is destroying democracy and taking America down the road to fascism.  If they really felt that way, why wouldn't they feel justified in engaging in some election fiddling to stop him?  You'd do anything you could to stop Hitler, wouldn't you?

And once he took office, Democrats refused to recognize the legitimacy of the election.  Editors of major publications like the New York Times and New Yorker announced they would lie about the President because they would refuse to "normalize" him - a vow they more than fulfilled over the last four years (for two examples of what the Times is willing to normalize read this and this).  In the Senate, Democrats obstructed presidential nominees to an unprecedented extent, simply because they were nominees of Donald Trump.

And lest we forget - what about the U.S. Postal Service conspiracy that made headlines for weeks late this summer and early fall?  A story with no substance became the hook for a Democratic conspiracy theory about Trump stealing the election.

As for accepting the result of the 2020 election, pray tell me - what did the storeowners who boarded up their properties in Washington, Manhattan, Boston and other cities just prior to the election, anticipate?  Enraged Republicans storming the streets, wreaking havoc?  No, they knew from this summer's experience, it would be the paramilitary wing of the Democratic Party taking to the streets if Biden lost and they also knew that the Democratic politicians who rule those cities would allow it to happen just as they had during the summer.  It is impossible to overstate the impact of what happened in American cities this summer in terms of destroying norms.  We've had riots before.  The difference was Progressive mayors in city after city standing aside, and often encouraging, while party supporters destroyed property and business and, since then violent crime has surged.  For the first time, Americans of all races understood that we are dependent on the whim of Progressives as to whether we would actually be protected against criminal elements.  We have entered a new world.

And speaking of what happened this summer, isn't the Black Lives Matter movement and Critical Race Theory one huge conspiracy theory?  Imagine, all the "evil" in the Western World attributable to, and explainable by, a single factor; a giant conspiracy to maintain white supremacy - the one thing that explains all.  And, if you deny it, it just proves you are part of the conspiracy.  It comes along with a full set of false narratives - Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Omar Mateen, disporportionate numbers of unarmed blacks killed by police - the list goes on and on.  This is classic conspiracy thinking in the guise of social justice and academic theory.

So while the Dominion conspiracy theory should be denounced and Trump needs to accept his defeat, we are not going to sit quietly and listen to lectures from Democrats and the media about "norms" and "conspiracies" when they've been complicit for four years in smashing norms, encouraging the conspiratorial fantasies of their followers, have yet to acknowledge their own shoddy behavior (indeed, they still mock those who say it is a hoax), losing the last shreds of their integrity, and  making their own contribution to the destruction of trust in American institutions.

We are all slowly going crazy (well, some more quickly than others) and unless we find a way to halt this spiral the outlook is grim.

-------------------

* I have not paid as much attention to every Trump related election claim as I did with the Russia collusion story.  With Russia collusion I became concerned, during the course of 2017, that something was not right with the story I was seeing in the media and decided to start reading every original source document I could find so as to draw my own conclusions.

In the case of the recent election, so many of the claims being made were false, and sometimes outright crazy, that I felt it not a good investment of my time to investigate in detail.  And that's the problem with conspiracists.  To the extent, there is some underlying validity to any claim regarding election fraud it has been buried under a pile of crap by its advocates.  Moreover, while Trump's erratic and improvisational nature, along with his lack of attention to detail, has occasionally served him well, it was precisely the wrong approach it you are preparing to contest an election.  Legal teams and observers should have been identified well in advance, lists of items to be carefully watched and documented should have been prepared so that the evidence could have been collected, instead of the madcap exercise going on now.  Further, some state actions could have been contested prior to election day.  For instance, the PA mail ballot case could have been filed months ago and it remains the case with the most legal merit (though even if Trump were to prevail, it would not change the national election outcome).

COVID + 8

Covid+7, listed 19 countries with per million death rates exceeding 400 and mentioned 5 others on a path towards that mark (only tracking countries with populations exceeding one million), in order to provide context for what is occurring in America, reporting a range given the variability in how Covid deaths are defined in each country.  It also tends to contradict accusations that the USA is deliberately overcounting covid deaths.

One month later, the list has expanded to 28 countries (including 4 of the 5 predicted) with at least seven others joining in the next 30 days.

This phase of the pandemic has slowed in South America.  North America still appears to be cresting.  Western Europe may have peaked (covid deaths in many countries increasing by 25-40% in the past 30 days) but Eastern Europe is still increasing (with many having more than 50% of all covid deaths in past 30-45 days) as are the former Soviet Republics and the covid wave has cross the Caucasus Mountains to hit Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan.  With the exception of Iran, much of the Middle East is improving as is India.  East Asia remains unchanged.  In North Africa, Tunisia is experiencing a wave, though much of the rest of the continent is stable.

Below is the current list by continent.  For those countries on last month's list the cumulative death rate as of Oct 22 and Nov 22 are shown in (parens), the October rate first.  Countries added in since last month in bold and only the Nov 22 rate is shown.

Europe

Belgium (908, 1337), Spain (738, 911), Italy (612, 825), UK (652, 809), France (524, 746), North Macedonia (420, 714), Bosnia & Herzogovina (-, 695), Czech Republic (-, 668), Sweden (586, 633), Moldova (407, 533), Romania (-, 524), Netherlands (404, 518), Slovenia (-, 506), Switzerland (-, 467),  Bulgaria (-, 416), Ireland (-, 408)

Above 400 within 30 days: Poland, Portugal, Austria, Hungary, Croatia; possibly Ukraine

North America

USA (688, 792), Mexico (676, 783), Panama (599, 681)

Above 400 within 30 days: Costa Rica; possibly Canada

South America

Peru (1026, 1074), Argentina (607, 816), Brazil (732, 794), Chile (720, 786), Bolivia (730, 759), Ecuador (705, 744), Colombia (581, 691)

Africa

None

Above 400 within 30 days: Tunisia; possibly South Africa

Asia

Armenia (-, 658), Iran (-, 531)

Above 400 within 30 days: Georgia; possibly Jordan

TOP TEN

Belgium (1337)

Peru (1074)

Spain (911)

Italy (825)

UK (809)

Brazil (794)

USA (792)

Chile (786)

Mexico (783)

Bolivia (759)

Bloody Sunday

A term most commonly associated with the shooting of twenty six protestors (of whom 14 died) by British soldiers in Derry, Northern Ireland on Sunday, January 30, 1972, an earlier Bloody Sunday, that took place 100 years ago on this date, played a role in ending an earlier Irish-English conflict.

Following the failure of the Easter uprising of April 16 by Irish nationalists and the severe British repression that followed, including execution of many of the uprising leaders and imprisonment of others, order was temporarily restored.  With the end of WW1 and the release of many of the prisoners, including Michael Collins, conditions once again began to quickly deteriorate in a violent contest between the IRA, Irish Unionists and the British military.

Matters escalated on both sides climaxing in the events of November 21, 1920.  Early in the day, IRA operatives at the direction of Collins, attacked 19 British intelligence officers in Dublin, killing 14 and wounding the others.  Most of the killings were at the officer homes and hotel rooms, including one shot in front of his 8 months pregnant wife.  And, as it turned out, not all the victims were intelligence officers.  The purpose of the attacks was to thwart the increasingly successful British efforts to infiltrate the IRA.

(Michael Collins)

That afternoon, in retaliation for the attacks, a mixed group of Royal Irish Constabulatory (RIC) and Blacks and Tans (ex-British soldiers recruited as an RIC auxiliary and known for their brutality) went to Croke Park where a Gaelic football game was underway between Dublin and Tipperary (the goalkeeper for Dublin was an IRA member who had participated in the attacks that morning).  The plan was to stop the game and search the men in attendance, looking for perpetrators of the morning attack.

The plan immediately went awry as enraged RIC and Black & Tans began indiscriminately firing into the crowd, killing 14 and wounding 80, including women and children.  The day ended with two IRA prisoners held by the British being tortured and murdered in reprisal.

(Three of the victims, age 10,11, 14)

The tragic events of that day caused both sides to reconsider their positions, as well as the Croke Park massacre impacting British public opinion, eventually prompting negotiations that resulted in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921 and the creation of the Irish Free State.  That treaty in turn led to the Irish Civil War of 1922-23 between those who supported the Treaty and those who held out for complete independence for the entire island.  In August 1922, Michael Collins, who supported the Treaty and was by then Commander-in-Chief of the National Army, was ambushed and killed.  He was 31.

This article in The Irish Times by historian Diarmaid Ferriter provides more detail on the events of Bloody Sunday.  And for insight into the tangled and disturbing legacy of the "Troubles" in the 70s and 80s I recommend Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe.

Don't You Worry

The world can always use more Stevie Wonder.  Don't You Worry 'bout A Thing from Innervisions.  This is one of those cuts where Stevie plays most of the instruments and sings all the vocal parts.

Hadrian's Other Wall

Emperor Hadrian (117-138) is well known for ordering the construction of the 70 mile stone fortification across the north of England, now known as Hadrian's Wall.  The wall was part of a large strategy of retrenchment, placing the Empire in a defensive posture for the first time since the founding of the Republic in 509 BC.  

Hadrian's immediate predecessor, Trajan (98-117) conquered Dacia (Romania) and annexed Armenia and Iraq.  The latter two overextended the empire's reach and Hadrian withdrew as well as relinquishing the plains of Romania to the barbarians while retaining the metal-rich uplands.

Shortly after his accession, Hadrian also prompted the erection of another wall, this time in Germany.  It was less ornate and permanent, being primarily a wooden palisade rather than stone structure.  It seems construction began shortly after Hadrian returned from the East to Rome in 118.  Some new details on the construction and its timing have recently come to light as described in Following Hadrian (the blog by Carole Raddato, who has spent years traveling through the former Roman world, retracing Hadrian's journeys).

After the defeat of Varus' legions in the Teutoberg Forest in 9 AD, the Romans had largely abandoned the east bank of the Rhine but during Domitian's reign (81-96) had reestablished a presence in what is now southwestern Germany, from the hills around modern Frankfurt and then heading southeast, encompassing most of the current state of Baden-Wurttemberg, until reaching the Danube in Bavaria.  While some fortifications had been built, it was under Hadrian that the system became organized and a physical barrier constructed.

 

Using the trunks of oak trees, the palisade stood up to 10 feet above ground.  The logs were pointed at the top and secured by cross beams.  The initial wall ran for about 50 miles between the Main and Neckar rivers - roughly from modern Frankfurt to east of Heidelberg) and it took about 1,000 trees per mile.

(Schematic of palisade, from Following Hadrian)

Watchtowers were constructed about every 1/2 mile along the wall and the entire section runs straight for the entire 50 miles.  Later emperors added to the barrier, eventually reaching 350 miles in length with 900 watchtowers.  

Wood is not as enduring as stone, so the initial palisade required rebuilding 50 or 60 years later.  The entire area was held until about 260 AD, when increasing pressures from the tribes forced the Romans to abandon the region and pull back behind the Rhine and Danube.

This video provides more information and, in its second part, a mini-tour of the entire barrier.

Ironically, it may have been the very presence of Rome on the borders of Germania that sparked the strengthening of the tribes and encouraging the incursions that eventually led to the fall of the Western Empire in the fifth century.  The Roman presence and increased trade led to greater wealth among the barbarians and a consolidation of formerly fragmented and constantly warring with each other tribes into great confederations like the Alemanni, Burgundians, Franks etc, as many of the tribal names from the 1st century disappeared by the third.

 

Reality Bites

President Trump needs to succeed in legal proceedings in three states of four states, PA, GA, Michigan and Wisconsin to prevail in his challenge to the election results.  That will not happen.

Failing that, President Trump needs to prevail upon the Republican dominated legislatures in three of those states to appoint the state's electors.  That will not happen (and it would be lunacy to try).

Joe Biden will be the next President.

The GOP needs to hold the Georgia Senate seats.

OR

Trump should be disqualified for continuing to tweet inane, discredited conspiracy theories about the vote and counting.  It is a disgrace that a sitting President is doing this and embarrassing to watch his chief lawyer, the obviously addled Rudy Giuliani, try to explain*.  Trump just doesn't care and tosses out to his audience any piece of favorable junk that comes to his attention without the slightest regard for accuracy.

Biden should be disqualified for his complicity in the Democratic Party's decades long effort to undermine the integrity of our election processes.  Democrats have systematically pushed for lax voter registration laws, opposed a regular process for purging voter registration lists to eliminate the ineligible, including dead voters, and resisted voter ID, all routinely employed by every other Western democracy to protect the legitimacy of the electoral process, as well as relentlessly pushing for general mail-in balloting and ballot harvesting, both banned by those same democracies because of their potential to undermine the integrity of elections.

And all capped by Democrats challenging the legitimacy of any election they lose - remember the Florida fraud in 2000, the Diebold machines in Ohio in 2004?  How about the Russia collusion hoax in 2016 when the Clinton campaign colluded with Russian intelligence and used Putin's disinformation to leak to the media, and persuade the FBI and DOJ to obtain a warrant to spy on its opponents campaign and then, when their opponent lost, create a 4-year campaign to undermine the legitimacy of that election?  And then we have sacred Progressive icon, Stacey Abrams, the Georgia mediocrity, who still refuses to concede she lost the 2018 gubernatorial race based upon her loony theory of voter suppression.

Best solution is for all state legislatures to ignore the votes and select independent electors pledged to support THC for President!

Can I count on your support?

------------------------------------

*  Rudy Giuliani trying to explain the conspiracy:

Perhaps Rudy could become Robert Mueller's roomie in a nice, quiet, long-term care facility.

Covid Context

 I was going to wait exactly a month from Covid+7 to do an update, but wanted to point out some things about today's data (as always, I am using Worldometers as my data source).

The USA today reported 173,000 new covid cases and 1,956 deaths, large numbers by any standards.

1.  Given the trend I expect both figures to increase over the next 2-3 weeks.

2.  The fatality numbers are the highest in the world today as an absolute number but, in reality, the U.S. has a lot of company with high fatality (and case) counts.  I went through today's data for every country with a population of more than 1 million and then scaled them up to the population of the U.S.  There are 34 other countries with elevated (more than 1,000) deaths on that scale and our neighbor Canada stands at 900.

The countries range from Slovenia (6500 deaths in U.S. equivalents), Belgium (6500) and Poland (5000) at the top end to Brazil (1100), Germany (1000), Russia (1000) and Colombia (1200) at the low.  The U.S. experience is, sad to say, not abnormal.  It includes countries not renowned for medical care as well as some with among the finest systems in the world, such as Switzerland.  A full list of the countries can be found below.

3.  The fact that the U.S. is not abnormal also indicates that while there is, as explained in Covid+7, variation in how countries account for deaths, there is also nothing to indicate that the U.S. death count is being "rigged" or "pumped up" compared to the rest of the world.

4.  Because of testing and analysis issues the number of Covid cases as an absolute figure has limited value; however it does have great value in trying to identify trends.

5.  Temporal aspects remain important.  If I had done a similar "scaled up" comparison this summer, Latin American countries, not European, would have topped the list.

6.  What we are seeing in the U.S. is now broad based across most of the lower 48 states.  Unlike the early spring, which saw a few states take the brunt of covid, everyone is now in the game.  Even states like Maine, which had stayed relatively unscathed, have seen a sharp increase over the past month.

7.  If you look at the countries and U.S. states it is difficult to find any consistent pattern in the public health measures and the outcomes we are seeing.  Covid doesn't do politics and we are continually humbled by what we don't know.

Country death counts for November 18 scaled up to USA population:

More than 3,000

Slovenia (6500), Belgium (6500), Poland (5000), Bulgaria (5000), Bosnia & Herzogovina (4700), Czech Republic (4000), Switzerland (4000), Italy (3800), Austria (3500), Hungary (3200)

2,000 to 3,000

Croatia (3000), Georgia (3000), Armenia (2900), Tunisia (2800), Lithuania (2800), Romania (2600), Spain (2500), UK (2400), Portugal (2400), France (2100)

Less than 2,000

USA (1956), Iran (1900), Jordan (1900), Greece (1800), Ukraine (1800), Argentina (1700), Netherlands (1500), Moldova (1400), Slovakia (1300), Colombia (1200), Brazil (1100), Panama (1100), Serbia (1000), Guatemala (1000), Germany (1000), Canada (900)

The Resolute Urgency Of Now

Billy Corgan on Howard Stern performing an acoustic version of his Smashing Pumpkins' 1990s song Tonight, Tonight.  It's missing the elaborate arrangement and strings of the Pumpkins original but is quite effective.  In the interview, Corgan remarks how surprised he's been at how the song has endured.  He starts playing at 1:50.

We'll crucify the insincere tonight, tonight
We'll make things right,
We'll feel it all tonight, tonight

We'll find a way to offer up the night tonight
The indescribable moments of your life tonight

The impossible is possible tonight, tonight
Believe in me as I believe in you tonight, tonight

What Is This Thing Called Love?

Sinatra at his finest, from his 1955 album of torch songs, In The Wee Small Hours.  Composed by Cole Porter.  Impeccable arrangement by Nelson Riddle.

 

Insularity

Insularity: ignorance of or lack of interest in cultures, ideas, or peoples outside one's own experience.

 

I like to occasionally read The Ringer, the Bill Simmons founded website featuring sports and pop culture.  I particularly like the sports coverage, find the pop culture stories sometimes interesting.  The Ringer every once in a while carries articles on politics which inevitably are Progressive-oriented, unable to fathom why anyone not a racist is not a Progressive, and exhibiting an invincible ignorance of basic facts and history.  I now know to avoid reading the overtly political articles but those attitudes can creep into their other posts.

A few days ago The Ringer ran a piece by Matthew Sigur on Chris Stapleton's new album, Starting Over.  I like Stapleton's music, read the article and came across this passage:

He’s no politician, and he doesn’t have all the answers. However, when asked about topics like gun violence, lack of care for U.S. veterans, or supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, Stapleton won’t back down from his beliefs.

“I’m for love, kindness, equality, being good to good people,” he says. “Some things don’t register to me if it’s against humanity.”

What is that supposed to be telling me?  I think in the context of the first paragraph, Sigur is signaling that Stapleton is on the right side of social justice and wokeness.  But look again at the quote from Stapleton and you can read it as merely asserting truisms that most people believe.  I certainly support love, kindness, equality and being good to good people, - it's how I try to live my life - but if you read this blog you know what I also think about social justice and wokeness.

Let's look more closely at that first paragraph, to what Sigur considers "topics".

The first is "gun violence" which is more a slogan than a topic.  I'm against violence in civilian life unless it is in self-defense.  I think most people are, regardless of their views about the "gun violence" or the Second Amendment.  I gather "gun violence" are Progressive code words for a grab bag of government actions they advocate but in and of itself the phrase is empty of substantive content.

"Lack of care for U.S. veterans".  All those in support of lack of care for veterans, please raise your hands.  I thought so.

And now we come to "supporting the Black Lives Matter movement".  That's where Stapleton's brilliant response comes into play.  It looks like Sigur takes it as supporting BLM.  But BLM explicitly opposes equality as well as love and kindness outside of a specific racial context, and denies our common humanity.  My guess is that Sigur, like many liberals or Progressives who don't pay close attention to substance, does not understand this about BLM.  I read Stapleton's response as very clever at not saying anything controversial.

What is most illuminating is that Sigur thinks believing in love, kindness, equality and being good to good people are characteristics exclusively of those on the Left.

That got me thinking of something else that's been bugging me.  On our recent two month trip back East we saw a lot of lawn signs like this:

“IN THIS HOUSE, WE BELIEVE: BLACK LIVES MATTER / WOMEN’S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS / NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL / SCIENCE IS REAL / LOVE IS LOVE / KINDNESS IS EVERYTHING”

They are often accompanied by Hate Has No Home Here and Biden/Harris signs.

But I was left scratching my head.  It appeared to be signaling that the posters were claiming something in defiance of the ignorant and bigoted types who don't believe.  But what the heck do these slogans mean? 

I think there are few people who don't think that Black Lives Matter, but I would ask those with the signs, if someone says, "All Lives Matter" should they be fired from their job, told to shut up, or be considered racist?  And do the posters actually support the entire platform of the Black Lives Matter organization which endorses, among other things, elimination of the nuclear family?

"Women's Rights Are Human Rights".  I believe in equality under the law but what, specifically is this supposed to mean?  As it stands it's just a meaningless statement.

"No Human Is Illegal".  Huh?  Is this an awkward way of saying they support open borders?  Do they believe humans can commit illegal acts? 

"Science Is Real".  Now there's a really controversial statement!  Having read enough Progressive tropes on this subject they think this is a shot at the ignorant non-Progressives who they think don't believe in science.  But even Progressives don't actually believe that slogan.  Ideologues like science that supports their views and dislikes science that does not and that's true across the political spectrum.  Doubt it?  Have a discussion with a Progressive about evolutionary biology and you'll be called transphobic or sexist, they'll go after your job, and try to deplatform you.  The people most likely to employ this slogan actually don't really know the science involved at any depth beyond sloganeering.  Want to talk the science, technology and data on climate change?  That's a topic I know a lot about and most of those who recite "Science is real" don't - just ask them some questions; trust me.

But there is a bigger problem with "Science is Real".  Those using the slogan also like to assert they will "follow the science" (see, for instance, Joe Biden and Andrew Cuomo), with the pretense that science can provide the solution to complicated societal issues without political input.  But while science can inform us, it does not dictate solutions in a political context - those solutions depend on the values we bring to the decision making.  Take Covid.  What are the types of expertise you need to decide what is the best course for a society?  It is not exclusively public health experts; it's why there is such discussion and disagreement about the true costs of lockdowns.  Are we just trying to prevent, or delay, or end the diseases?  What are the costs of each strategy in doing so?  Moreover, as we've seen with Covid, even public health experts do not agree, there is actually no such thing as one certain thing the science tells us. And let's look at the track record here - public health experts opposed travel bans, told us for two months that non-medical personnel wearing masks was stupid and useless, banned private efforts to develop Covid tests, saying "we've got this", and more recently told us that a Covid immunity shield descended on those demonstrating and rioting in favor of causes supported by public health officials.

Science is important.  I'm an analytical type and don't like it when Left or Right jumps right over analysis to advocacy.  More worrying is seeing more and more scientists doing the same.  A final example - science can tell us, and has told us, a lot more in recent years about fetuses but it can only inform, not answer, the moral questions and competing values around abortion.  

"Love Is Love".  I'm on board for that!  Though I suspect there is a secret decoder ring subtext I am missing.

"Kindness Is Everything".  That's a demonstrably false statement.  This is something way beyond generally taking an approach of kindness or, as Chris Stapleton put it, "being good to good people". It's actually quite simpleminded if taken literally and I am confident if you probe poster attitudes on political topics you'll find they don't believe it either.  And you can't support the goals of the Black Lives Matter organization and also believe "kindness is everything".

In the instances described above we see insularity in action.  Progressive sloganeering that actually doesn't make much sense deployed against non-Progressive strawmen that exist in their minds, but not in real life.

As for me, I'll roll with this lawn sign:

Before The Green Monster

Fenway Park - 1917

A few differences between now and then, and even between 1917 and the major reconstruction in the early 1930s.

In Left Field is a wall, but not the Green Monster we know and love.  In front of the wall you'll notice the outfield seems to slope upwards.  That's not an optical illusion, it actually is a 10-foot slope on which the ball is still in play.  It was placed there when the park was constructed in 1911-12, to accommodate overflow crowds would could sit there and because of the slope see over each other.  It was rarely used and most of the time posed a challenge to outfielders.  The area became known as Duffy's Cliff for Red Sox outfielder Duffy Lewis who patrolled left field from 1912 through 1916 and became a master at handling balls hit towards the slope.

As you go to center, you'll see that where there are now grandstands there is a great hole making straight-away center very, very deep.

As we move to Right Field there are no bullpens in front of the bleachers, making home run hitting very difficult for a left hander.  Indeed, the greatest slugger of the day, left-handed Babe Ruth hit only 11 of his 49 home runs between 1914 and 1919 at Fenway and over his career the Babe's slugging percentage at Fenway was the lowest of the nine ballparks in which he played the bulk of his career.

Back On The Chain Gang

 I found a picture of you/those were the happiest days of my life

Chrissie Hynde and some Pretenders playing a socially distanced Back On The Chain Gang for BBC2 Live this summer.

Going Home

A tribute played by Mark Knopfler for his friend, Formula One driver, Sir Stirling Moss, who passed last month.  

From the movie Local Hero.  Want to lower your blood pressure, relax and enjoy yourself for a couple of hours?  Watch it.

I Need More Love

This was the first music video featured on THC more than eight years ago.  Still a great song and who can disagree with the sentiment?  Never understood why Robert Randolph and the Family Band weren't bigger.

Subdivisions

Charlie Brown, Linus, Snoopy, Lucy and the rest of the Peanuts crew finally got sick of the same old jazzy score for their shows and decided to do something different.  Here is their cover of Rush's Subdivisions which I think better than the original.  You decide.

The Battle Of Rizal Ballpark

 For Veteran's Day . . .

On February 15-16, 1945 American and Japanese soldiers fought a pitched battle in and around the Rizal baseball field in Manila, capital of the Philippines.

The Rizal Memorial Field sports complex opened in 1934 in time to host the Far East Games, an Asian multi-sport competition and included track, football, baseball, tennis and swimming stadiums.  Baseball had been introduced by the Americans who occupied the Philippines after the Spanish-American War in 1898.  The complex was named after Jose Rizal, doctor, author, and a figure in the resistance to the Spanish occupation who was executed by a firing squad in 1896.

The first home runs hit in the baseball stadium were in an exhibition game on December 2, 1934 by Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth who were on a Far East tour to promote baseball (it was this tour that also sparked baseball interest in Japan).

The 1945 Battle of Rizal was part of the horrible month long Battle of Manila, the most intense urban warfare in the Pacific during WW2 and considered by many historians only second to Stalingrad in the extent of destruction.  The American reconquest of the Philippines began with landings on the island of Leyte in October 1945.  In early January, Americans under the command of General Douglas MacArthur, landed on Luzon, the largest island and began advancing on Manila.

MacArthur, who had lived in the Philippines for many years and been evacuated by order of President Roosevelt in March 1942 desperately wanted to retake the city intact.  When the Japanese attacked in December 1941, MacArthur declared Manila an open city and evacuated his forces, so the capital fell intact and undamaged.  He hoped the Japanese would take the same course now that the position was to be reversed.  It was not to be.

General Tomoyuki Yamashita, the Japanese commander in the Philippines, situated his headquarters in the mountains of northern Luzon (from where resistance continued until the surrender in August 1945).  Knowing Manila to be indefensible he ordered the local commanders to evacuate the city as the Americans approached.  However Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi ignored the orders and with the 17,000 naval personnel under his command began transforming Manila into a fortress.  Iwabuchi was under no illusions about the outcome of the battle; his address to his troops included this:

We are very glad and grateful for the opportunity of being able to serve our country in this epic battle. Now, with what strength remains, we will daringly engage the enemy. Banzai to the Emperor! We are determined to fight to the last man.

It is thought that Iwabuchi's actions were motivated by his surviving the sinking of his battleship Kirishima off of Guadalcanal in late 1942, a survival that stained his reputation in the Navy. 

Beginning on February 3, American soldiers had to fight there way step by step, building by building, block by block through Manila against fanatical resistance.  MacArthur, desperate to avoid destroying the city refused to allow aerial bombardment throughout the month, though increasingly field artillery was deployed to reduce enemy strongholds.

It was not only the complete destruction of Manila that made the battle so terrible.  The worst were the crimes committed by the Japanese, leading to the deaths of more than 100,000 Filipino men, women, and children.  The violence escalated as the battle raged.  On February 13, Admiral Iwabuchi ordered his soldiers to kill all remaining civilians, including priests and nuns, within the Japanese lines.  Civilians were shot individually and in mass executions though eventually, to save ammunition, the Japanese preferred setting people on fire, driving them into buildings which would then be blown up, bayonets, and beheadings.  In some instances, Japanese lashed civilians to the outside of strategic buildings hoping they would be a deterrent to American artillery.  Japanese soldiers also committed mass rapes.  I will spare you further details.

On February 15, the 5th and 12th U.S. Cavalry regiments approached Rizal Stadium, where four companies of Japanese soldiers were stationed.  Late in afternoon troopers of the 5th Cavalry broke into the ballpark but were driven out by mortar, machine gun and rifle fired.

The assault was renewed the next morning and by late afternoon the Americans controlled the field.  This is the most complete account of the action I've found:

The 5th Cavalry cleared the baseball grounds on 16 February after three tanks, having blasted and battered their way through a cement wall on the east side of the park, got into the playing field to support the cavalrymen inside. Resistance came from heavy bunkers constructed all over the diamond, most of them located in left field and in left center, and from sandbagged positions under the grandstand beyond the third base-left field foul line. Flame throwers and demolitions overcame the last resistance, and by 1630 the 5th Cavalry had finished the job. 

In addition, the Japanese were dug into the stands, dugouts and tunnels behind home plate and the first base line and firing slots had been cut into the walls in those areas.  Every Japanese in the ballpark was killed. 

You can watch footage of the battle here and go here for a longer video containing footage inside the baseball stadium.

On February 26, Admiral Iwabuchi committed suicide and several days later all Japanese resistance ceased.

In the concluding volume of his trilogy on the Pacific War, Twilight of the Gods, Ian Toll's writes of the battle's aftermath:

"For the Filipino people, the price of losing Manila was incalculable.  In the old, historic city center, it was not even a question of rebuilding - they would have to cart off the rubble and begin anew, with a blank slate.  Much of the nation's cultural patrimony had been obliterated: architecture, libraries, museums, archives, the history of several centuries . . . Manila, the elegant and functional city, "Pearl of the Orient" had been the single most valuable asset possessed by this emerging Asian democracy."

35,000 American troops assisted by 3,000 Filipino guerrillas fought in the battle.  1,010 Americans died and 5,595 were wounded.  We honor all of them.

I Voted For . . .

. . . Donald Trump even though just a few days ago I wrote this about his handling of covid-19:

The President did what he often does.  The actual actions taken at his direction were often good or at least not bad, but they were accompanied by inconsistent statements, sloppy rhetoric, bad tone, goofy ramblings and stream of consciousness which is not what the public wants to hear at a time like this.  He sounded (and sounds) like a man not in control of himself. 

In 2019, in the midst of more turmoil I commented:

The latest kerfuffle over the Ukraine is also a self-generated disaster.  Getting Rudy Guiliani involved in anything at this point in his career shows poor judgment as does engaging in the phone call with the newly elected president of the Ukraine.

The actions referenced at the top, are of the same ilk.  He should never have suggested use of his resort for the G-7 meeting and it shows once again Trump's inability to separate his own personal interests from those of the office.

And the nature of his attack on Mattis is idiotic and typical Trumpian hyperbole.  It also reinforces the image (a correct one in my opinion) that he's a terrible guy to work for.  Irrational, prone to outbursts, not willing to read anything, and a guy who will turn on his subordinates rather than take any part of the blame for the things that go wrong.  He is not a stand up guy.

In a 2018 post on the President's Helsinki summit with Putin, I thought the meeting a bad idea, writing "I don't consider the president 'intellectually solvent and emotionally stable' "and, in its wake, commenting:

UPDATE:  Well, my worst fears were realized.  First, we had last night's disgraceful tweet blaming problems with Russian-American relations solely on the United States followed by Trump's awful performance at the press conference with Putin.  I'll end with this from the conservative blog Powerline:

Trump seems unable to handle that truth. All that matters to him is the absence of any suggestion that his 2016 victory was tainted. Thus, he puts his own ego ahead of the national interest in responding to a Russian assault on our democratic process. That’s disgusting.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE:  The President's course of action since the summit only compounds his problems.  His retraction of his controversial Helsinki statement, followed by his retraction of his retraction, followed by something I can't even figure out, along with his entertaining (however briefly) Putin's offer to trade interviews of US and Russians, and his seeming endorsement of Russia's second gas pipeline to Germany, after telling the Germans they were foolish to allow it, make him look foolish and inept.  I don't like the idea of the fall summit with Putin in DC, because when Trump is with Putin he acts like a star struck teenage girl. 

And during the 2016 campaign I referred to his "idiotic remarks" about a Federal judge in my post What Would Otter Do?

You can find more such comments in other posts including references to Trump's gullibility and susceptibility to conspiracy theories (my tricky way to get you to read more on my blog which also contains a lot of history, music, movies, baseball, and books).

If this election were a referendum on whether I like Donald Trump, my vote would be no.  But it's not.

So, how is it I'm voting for the guy?

Well, that's a long story and you may want to delve into my Your Future series for a more complete understanding than set forth below (which is already quite long enough!).

________________________________

During the first George W Bush administration, Karl Rove ran around with a slide deck describing his strategy for creating a Permanent Republican Majority.  I thought it silly not only because his strategy and tactics were wrong (as demonstrated by the failure of the Bush presidency) but, more importantly, because I believed American history taught us there is no such thing as a permanent majority for any party.  

I now think I may have been incorrect.

America and its institutions are deeply troubled.  The GOP collapsed due to ineptness, cowardice, corruption, incoherence, and finally, the betrayal of its base, all leading to Donald Trump.  The Democratic Party has moved Left so quickly my head is spinning, forsaking its traditions of freedom of speech and its commitment to due process and equal protection under the law, capped by the events since May, when Democratic mayors stepped aside to let their party's paramilitary wing destroy, burn, and loot at will in cities governed by Progressives for decades.  Both have proved inept in governance. Meanwhile, our non-governmental institutions have also been rotting away and lost public trust.  None of this will be cured by the outcome of this election, but my choice is based on what I think buys America the most time to see if it can come out of this tailspin and we can remain one people.

In the midst of these troubles, large segments of the Democratic Party have been working themselves into an hysterical frenzy in order to justify changing the rules under which we operate, not just politically, but as a society, in such a way as to ensure those who oppose them can never regain power.  You can better understand how fundamentally illiberal these doctrines are by reading my Your Future series and the twitter feeds and online presence of a host of traditional liberals/progressives who are raising the warnings about the Woke and current trends, not just in America, but across the Anglosphere.

These include Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein (Sanders supporters driven from Evergreen State College because of their belief in evolutionary biology and stand against racism), Bari Weiss (driven from the New York Times), Andrew Sullivan (driven from New York Magazine), Zaid Jilani, John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Claire Lehman, Asra Nomani, Chloe Valdary, Inaya Folarin Iman, Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose.

Though a number of them have backed away from taking the final step of voting for Trump (an issue I discuss in Do The Right Thing), James Lindsay, who has been shouting the longest and loudest about Critical Race Theory and the Woke, as well as a self-described progressive who supported and stumped for Obama and voted for Clinton, has endorsed Trump in view of how dangerous the situation has become.  You should read him on twitter and look at the materials at his website, New Discourses or indulge yourself in the entertaining explainers from the Woke Temple.

Put another way, however repellent Trump is, if you examine what he has actually done, nothing is irrevocable, nothing changes the basic rules under which we operate.  I haven't watched TV or cable news in many years or listened to talk radio, but I caught part of an interview with Tucker Carlson on CSPAN a year or so ago and what he said struck me as on point regarding Trump.  Tucker said Trump had done a service by raising many questions like; what is the purpose of NATO, is it still valid?, why do we have such a counterproductive trade policy with China?, why don't we have a sane immigration policy? and more, but that he was not the person to effectively make changes because of his inattention to detail, impulsiveness, unwillingness to learn the mechanics of government and inability to think deeply about solutions and strategy.

In contrast Democrats are moving quickly towards irrevocable change with growing hostility to free speech, and gaining control of so many institutions in our society from which they are rapidly purging dissenters, including liberals who aren't 100% on board with today's identity Progressives.

I've always been a process guy.  Keeping a society of 330 million people together, when we have so many different perspectives, viewpoints, and backgrounds is difficult.  It can only be done with respect and a large degree of tolerance for differences and with the understanding that if we follow neutral processes, we may lose a fight, but nothing is forever.  And yes, I realize no process is truly neutral but without the attempt to construct and adhere to them, however flawed, we are only left with raw power as the rule.  If those processes are destroyed or manipulated, only repression is left and, as we've seen this year, repression is already occurring and more is promised in a Democratic victory.

This was understood by those debating a new Constitution in 1787.  They had a problem to solve.  How to establish a more powerful federal government to replace that under the Articles of Confederation, yet not have it become too powerful.  The delegates knew their history.  They knew that all forms of government tended to degenerate over time.

Monarchy to absolutism.

Aristocracy to oligarchy.

Democracy to tyranny.

That is an observation that holds true even today while back then it prompted James Madison's famous observation in Federalist 51:

But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.  

How can government control itself?  And how can we avoid resolving disputes by killing each other in the streets?  That is what they, and we, seek to solve.

A Republic with strong democratic tendencies, an unprecedented historical combination on the scale of a populace of millions spread over hundreds of thousands of square miles, utilizing various checks and balances and separated powers was their solution.  Would we survive changes of power, without such a degree of existential terror created in the losers that civil unrest or war would result?  We passed that test in 1800 with the transfer of power between the Federalists and the Democrats, when John Adams quietly (and bitterly) got into his carriage and returned to Braintree.  We failed with the Civil War because slavery raised fundamental issues, beyond just those of the enslaved, that could not be resolved, creating irreconcilable differences with the Democratic Party, leading to its split and the election of Lincoln.  And speaking of the Civil War it is shocking to see Progressives adopt the arguments of secessionist and slaveholder John C Calhoun, with whom they agree on the interpretation of American history as well as their similar approach on dissent to the South' slave holding aristocrats, who saw any American institution that did not endorse slavery as a threat to them.

For the past 150 years we have managed to keep ourselves intact despite differences and build a successful, thriving country, a country of amazing diversity with a mix of races, ethnicity and religions amid a degree of personal freedom unlike anything seen before in history, though some today would like to pretend modern America is a hellhole of oppression and brutality.  Or, as Andrew Sullivan has observed:

And so our unprecedentedly multicultural, and multiracial democracy is now described as a mere front for “white supremacy"

The rhetorical trap of critical theory is that it has coopted the cause of inclusion and forced liberals onto the defensive.

Or, as James Lindsay, has said:

"[Critical Race Theory] is evil.  It plays on people’s best nature; it takes good people and twists them to its purpose." 

While the emergence of those with the "hellhole" position - Woke and the paramilitary wing of the Democratic Party (Antifa, BLM etc) this year, with Democratic politicians either actively supporting them or standing silently by, should make the stakes clear to all of us, this has been brewing for a decade as significant parts of the Democratic electorate have rationalized limits on free speech and religious conscience they don't agree with by simply classifying it as "hate speech".  I was a liberal Democrat, back when we believed in freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, due process and equality under the law.  I still believe in those principles which is why I am no longer a Democrat.  And it is discouraging to see that for many organizations and individuals those principles were merely tactics.

Today's identity Progressives/Woke bring the same analysis to American society as White Nationalists.  Both believe everything can be explained solely in terms of race.  Their only difference is who they think should be on top in the society.

And so much of what is going on is projection.

We hear that Trump is authoritarian, encourages violence, and a threat to our democracy.

But over the past few days we've heard of city governments and storeowners getting prepared for violence in the wake of the election?  Is it Trump supporters they fear?  No, it's the paramilitary wing of the Democratic Party.

And who is it that threatens others so they fear that anything they might say, or even if they follow on twitter the wrong person, might cause them the loss of their career, their job, their educational opportunities?  Again, it is the Left that is shutting people down because they merely disagree with them.

This isn't new:

For four years we heard about Russian collusion and Donald Trump and it is still treated as a fact by many.  Yet, we now know that not only was it a gigantic hoax, but that it was the Clinton campaign that was colluding with the Kremlin.  It is the Democratic Party and its media allies that have served as Putin's Poodles for four years, helping him fulfill his goal of creating chaos in America.

We heard in 2016 and again this year, that Trump would not accept the results of a democratic election process.  Yet it proved to be the Democrats in 2016 who would not do so, ginning up the Russia collusion hoax and, to an extent never seen in American politics, blocking routine nominations of Trump appointees in an effort to impede his efforts to govern.  And should Trump, to my surprise, win again, the Democrats will react even more poorly.  It is the Democratic Party that today is a threat to democracy.

In 2016 we kept hearing about how Trump would disrupt campaigns, yet it was Democrats who attempted to stop Trump rallies from occurring, not vice versa.  It was Democrats who beat up Trump supporters leaving his rallies, even as Democratic mayors directed local police to stand aside while those attacks occurred.

We were told immediately after the 2016 election that there would be a wave of hate unleashed by Trump supporters, but what we saw was a wave of fake hate crimes by Democrats.

We were told that after the inauguration, Trump's brown shirts would be roaming the streets violently attacking opponents.  Instead what we had were progressive college students attacking speakers they didn't like.  We had Bernie Brothers attempting mass murder of Republicans at a baseball practice and attacking Rand Paul, sending him to the hospital and requiring removal of part of a lung.  We've had GOP Congressional candidates driven off the road by Progressives and another candidate victim of an attempted stabbing.

Did you hear about what happened in December 2016?  A guy in Alabama saw a woman delivery driver for FedEx.  He thought she was Hillary Clinton so he walked up and shot her in the back of the head.  You didn't?  That's because it never happened.  What did happen in December 2016 was a guy in Ithaca, NY shot a FedEx driver in the back of the head because he thought he was Donald Trump.  The story was buried (I only came across it by accident).  Let's be honest - we all know that if this had happened the way I first told it, we'd have seen months of coverage focused on how Trump's rhetoric inspired violence and the need for more gun control.  Instead, nothing.

One of Donald Trump's many flaws has contributed to this and played into the hands of his enemies.  He does, at time, sound like an authoritarian or maybe it's best described as a wannabe authoritarian.  For instance, during Covid he made ridiculous statements about actions he might take in response - actions that would have been outside his constitutional authority.  He then backed off precisely because he does not have the authority.  There has been a massive disconnect between his rhetoric and his actions (and that's on him, and one of the reasons for my dislike), while the media and Democratic Party attempt to cover up the massive evidence that the real authoritarian risk is on the Left

Do I think the majority of Democratic voters embrace the Woke and its authoritarian ethos?  No, and the polling data backs that up with support for the Woke strongest among wealthier, higher educated Whites (notice that in 2020, as in 2016, the political contributions of Wall Street, the hedge funds, and tech oligarchs are running more than 20 to 1 in support of Democrats) but off in other White demographics, Blacks and Hispanics.  But history teaches us, we do not need a majority to carry the day.  A well-funded, highly motivated and politically savvy minority often carries the day as it currently is with today's Democrats.

Do I think Joe Biden understands what he is saying when claiming America is systemically racist?  No, he thinks he's making a general statement against racism.  But the people around him do, as do the thousands of political appointees who will fill his administration.  While I persist in believing there are still Democrats in Congress who are wary of the Woke and oppose suppression of speech, feeling that after the election "those people" can be managed I think they underestimate the whirlwind they have unleashed and their ability to control and channel it.

I mentioned that what we have seen break into the open this year - rioting and looting in major cities, conducted with the approval of Democratic mayors in cities governed by Progressives for decades (and why are these cities such hellholes of racism?), while other Democratic politicians stayed silent; the purging of people, including many traditional liberals, for merely failing to agree to every part of the Woke party line, again while mainline Democrats remain silent, didn't start in 2020.

The doctrines of Critical Race Theory have been gestating in the academy for a long time.  As they reached maturity, they began to infiltrate K-12 education, and the growth of social media provided a further breeding ground, until it finally erupted like the creature in Alien, bursting out of John Hurt's chest, ravenous, insatiable and destroying everything in its wake.

Years ago, reading about CRT and other loony fads of academic theology, my reaction was that no one could really take it seriously and once students got out in the real world their views would change.  I was wrong.  CRT justifies suppression of any viewpoint and any person that does not accept it completely.  It is not about having dialogue.  You are either in or out.  It corrupts everything it comes in contact with.

For all the talk in the media and by Progressives about power and privilege they are just blowing smoke; they are telling you things that just ain't so (I explain how they do the trick in A Closed Ecosystem).

Colin Kapernick can hate America, celebrate the murdering, homophobic thugs Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, score multi-million dollar deals with Nike and Disney and have Netflix make a series based on his life (while never having to be hit by 300 pound linemen again), while a nurse at an academic hospital in Massachusetts gets fired for writing that all patients matter at her hospital.  You tell me who has the power and privilege.

You tell me who has the power and privilege when so many of our institutions seem to have fallen under the sway of the Woke; academia, publishing, news media, social media, high tech, foundations, government bureaucracies, K-12 education, with most other institutions either on board or too intimidated to fight back.

It is the potential of this institutional capture combined with the likely capture of the entire Federal government that poses such a danger.  We spoke earlier about authoritarianism.  The better terms for the Woke, CRT, and its supporters in the Democratic Party are totalitarian and fascist (I use here the definition of fascism used by Benito Mussolini, "Everything inside the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state").  It is totalitarian because it makes no distinction between the public and the private; better action, speech, and thoughts.  

During my working career I hired, promoted, mentored a lot of people (and occasionally let others go).  It never occurred to me that their political views should have anything to do with any of those decisions.  I hired people of different races, genders, ethnicity, religions and, again, it never occurred to me that those factors should have anything to do with my decisions.  That no longer seems to be the case in many places and, if so, I simply do not see how we can sustain ourselves as one people, except through suppression and force.

When I was in college in the late 60s and early 70s, the expression "the personal is political" became popular with radicals before it faded away.  I thought it terrible then and to now see it rise from the grave decades later with far more backing than it had is to see the worst of our past resurrected.

Voting for Donald Trump and GOP candidates will not guarantee we can avoid the worst over the long-term but it, at least prevents three institutions, the Presidency and Executive Branch, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, from falling to the radicals who want to change the very rules of our society.  Whether Trump and the GOP can make good use of that time I cannot say.

The downsides are that if Trump wins, which I do not expect, we will face near-insurrection by his opponents and continued obstruction by Democrats in Congress.  In that respect it will be worse than what we saw in his first term.

We also have Trump himself.  Four more years of his rhetoric and his exhausting 24/7 reality show.

The other risk is that, somewhat to my surprise, he has not made any catastrophic policy moves so far, particularly in foreign policy.  With Trump however, past performance is no guarantee of what the future hold

And if Biden wins and the Democrats control the Senate? I know some Progressives who are very anti-Woke are supporting Biden on the theory that he and the other grandees of the party can keep the crazies in check.  I hope they are correct, but I doubt it.  This is not the Joe Biden of twenty years ago; he's merely a figurehead.  The Executive Branch will go fully Woke, and Trump's outstanding Executive Order blocking training that promotes racial stereotyping and scapegoating will be repealed.  There may be enough Democratic senators willing to block court-packing but beyond that I expect not much favorable in turning around the trend within the party towards radicalism and intolerance.  Moreover, a Democrat vicotry will encourage the social media and other high tech companies to do what they've been itching to do, but constrained so far by the possibility of the GOP still controlling parts of the government, and that is much broader censorship of non-Progressive views on its platform.  You will also see far more sweeping purges of heretics in academia and the corporate world.

What I am confident of is this.  If Trump loses, a lot of people who voted against him because they just can't stand the guy, but who really did not understand what today's Democratic Party is like, are really going to regret it.

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There is a positive policy case to be made for Trump.  The President continually complicates his situation and repels people he could potentially persuade because of the frequent disconnect between his rhetoric and his actions.  He sounds authoritarian at times and I don't think he has any particular reverence or knowledge of the Constitution, separation of powers, or how the regulatory or legal process works which makes it easy for his opponents to caricature him though his actions have been consistently within those constraints (the opposite being true of Progressives).

Foreign Policy

No new foreign entanglements or wars!

The Middle East.  The "experts" have been consistently wrong and Trump right.  We were told moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem (as long required under U.S. law, but long ignored by prior Presidents) would spark riots in the street and end the peace process.  It did not.  We were told Arab nations would never normalize relations with Israel without a peace agreement with the Palestinians.  They were wrong.

We were told Trump's peace efforts would be fruitless and naming Jared Kushner as his envoy was idiotic (and I joined them in that opinion!).  They (and I) were wrong.  Bahrain and the UAE have normalized relations with Israel (which would never have occurred without an approving nod from Saudi Arabia), more recently joined by Sudan, with more Arab nations to come.

We were told that ordering the killing Solemaini would spark a wider war with Iran.  They were wrong.  It is that action, more than any other that played to Trump's instincts for short, sharp, and powerful responses rather than engage in the tit-for-tat preferred by our foreign policy elite, a policy that tends to prolong conflict and leave the initiative with our enemies.

A more confrontational China policy and strengthening relations with India.

Ironically, despite Trump's rhetoric, a tougher policy on Russia.

Raising legitimate questions about the purpose of NATO and who should bare the financial burden. 

Successfully renegotiating NAFTA.

Domestic Policy

Appointment of judges who reject the doctrine of Living Constitutionalism which would reduce the Courts to just another legislative branch enacting its policy preferences (with a tip of the hat to "Cocaine" Mitch McConnell for his work).  I explain the importance of this in A Misunderstanding or Projection?

The recent actions to ban training using racial stereotypes and scapegoating in the Federal bureaucracy, and by Federal contractors and grantees, while continuing to allow diversity training (you can read more on the details in my post Righteous Acts).

Tax reform, including eliminating local and state tax deductions which disproportionately benefit the wealthy (and which Democrats, despite their rhetoric, are trying desperately to repeal by holding up Covid relief as a bargaining chip).

Until Covid, a booming economy with record low unemployment rates for Black and Hispanics.  A couple of years ago, I decided to start following the official White House twitter feed as well as Trump's personal feed.  I've had to take breaks a few times when Trump goes on one of his insane twitter binges and I can't take it anymore, but what surprised me is the amount of positive White House activity that most media refuses to cover, including how much of it is around Black Americans and how large a presence they have at White House events, a reality very much counter to the Progressive media narrative.

Incremental progress on healthcare in terms of availability and cost.

The biggest failure is that Trump simply does not care about the long-term fiscal stability of the United States and our budget and spending problems have accelerated.  Unfortunately, the reality is the Democrats don't care, and even most of the Republicans who claimed to care really didn't and sighed with relief when it was not important to Trump so they don't even have to pretend anymore.

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One final consideration.  I've written extensively on the Russian collusion hoax, explaining how, when the allegations were first raised, I thought there might be something to them because of Trump's reckless and stupid statements about Putin and Russia during the 2016 campaign.  Over the past four years I've read 10,000 pages of reports, transcripts, court proceedings, warrant applications, text messages etc to determine for myself what was going on - I do not rely on anything from Left wing outfits like the New York Times or WaPo or from Right outlets like Breitbart and Gateway Pundit.  My views changed.

The reality is stunning.  This is the greatest political scandal of my lifetime and possibly in American history.  Think about how Watergate would have played out if the Times and Post had been on Nixon's side and that is what you have here.  You can read my entire Russia Collusion series or this summing up (Election Tampering) from April to understand my conclusions.  And since April much new information has come to light so the situation is even worse than I thought, which I scarcely thought possible.  

It was the Clinton campaign that colluded with the Russians and worked to insert this disinformation into the media and the FBI during the campaign and then, to undermine the new Trump administration and explain away its embarrassing defeat, further propagated this nonsense with the cooperation of elements in the Justice Department and intelligence community hostile to Trump and with the full assistance of much of the media.

If Trump loses and the ongoing investigations are curtailed by the Biden administration, which I fully expect, the full story will not be revealed and miscreants will go unpunished.  The lesson for Americans will be you can act with impunity if you are on the side of the Democrats.  A lesson we will remember.